NATS '05

I finally made it to NATS! "NATS" refers to the week-long combat warship Nationals battle, held once a year in July. I've been dreaming of going to one of these events ever since I first discovered the hobby and read the stories accompanying previous NATS. And now that it has come and gone, I can definitely say that it was everything it was cracked up to be! So with out further ado, here is what went down.

Saturday, 16 July 2005

Vince and I set out for the New York battle site at "Oh-Dark-Thirty." We had to drive clear across 4 states, so if we had any hope of getting to our destination at a reasonable hour, we had no other choice than to get an early start. Darkness was falling when we finally reached New York state, and a combination of the twilight and the hilly, twisting roads in the area around the battle site gave us a little trouble. Finally, though, we managed to pull up at Camp Conron, a Boy Scout camp complete with a house, tent areas, and f course a lake. We ensconced ourselves in the garage/storage room of the cabin, and tried to sleep off our 15 hour drive.

Sunday, 17 July 2005

The dawn light gave us the first good look at the battling site. The lake was smaller than I was expecting after Regionals last fall, but a lot of the veterans seemed to Ship testing time! I had spent the weeks leading up to NATS getting the Moltke ready for action. I re-skined her, overhauled the cannons, and checked the electric system. Since my boat only has one servo for the rudder and relies on Delta boards, solenoids, and an ESC for everything else, I wanted to make sure that there were no snags. Going into testing, I was confident the only issue I would have would be that my boat would be running too fast, an easy correction to make with the ESC by using the throw limiting function on my radio. Then, reality set in; I discovered I had to re-sheet my hull when it failed the hull hardness test! Thanks to some new balsa from Carl, I was back on the water that afternoon. I did indeed have to slow down the boat a few seconds, but with all of that accomplished I was ready and raring to start battling the next day.

Monday, 18 July 2005

The first day of battling! There were two fleet battles for a total of 4 sorties. The Axis didn't do so well, thanks to a couple of sinks, but I did get a chance to do my first ship recovery. And I'll be darned, I kind of enjoyed it. I'm sort of a Robert Ballard wannabe, I guess. Anyway, I was generally happy with how this day went. The Moltke (now renamed Goeben to differentiate it from the other Moltke present at the battle) performed well, of course I was (and am!)  still a long well from being able to fight it to the utmost of the ship's ability. I played it safe in the morning battle, and took relatively minor damage as a result. In the afternoon though, I got a little reckless and found myself exactly where I didn't want to be...behind Allied tripple sterns! Let's just say that by the end of the day, my bow had slightly improved ventilation.

Tuesday, 19 July 2005

While there was a fleet battle on Tuesday morning, the thing I'll most remember about this day is my first Campaign Battle. I was roughly familiar with the rules, and it sounded like fun. However, a bunch of groans went up when it came time. I didn't pay it much heed, as I was determined to experience it for myself. As a matter of fact, I was so eager, I joined in the effort to set up the bases where targets would be set up. Anyway, the campaign battle went pretty well, although I wasn't able to get much done as my stern cannon was acting up and the larger warships took most of the shots at the convoys. The most notable convoy out there was the carrier Hornet, which was unfortunately sunk in deep water. It took me and Matt Andrews the better part of 20 minutes to find that sucker! The kicker is that when we pulled it up after having sat on the bottom for an hour, there wasn't a drop of water in the radio box, which was a Tupperware container secured with rubber bands! This little exploit, by the way, started the legend of "Andrews & Andy Salvage." The other thing to note about Tuesday was that I got introduced to the concept of "Hayes" buoys...

Wednesday, 20 July 2005

This was a sort of a rest day. There weren't any formal fleet battles, but there were several mini battles as well as one on ones. I tried my hand at a few 1v1s, but I came out the worse on all three of them! Heh, my battling technique still has a way to go, I guess. Other than the 1v1s, I didn't do a whole lot of battling on Wednesday. Instead, I focused on doing a bit of taping. I was able to get quite a bit of action on film, supplementing the tape Vince took on Monday. That night, there was the night battle. Seeing as I won't get a chance to battle again for a while, I decided to try and get the most out of the NATs experience by throwing my hat in the ring as well. As soon as I put my boat in the water, my haphazardly built lighting system conked (naturally), so I was going blind right from the start. I tried my best to stick to the advice given to me by the vets: "Find a target, shoot your BBs, and get on 5!" I did my best to do just that, but I managed to momentarily lose track of my ship in the haze that was created by an Allied ship that developed a small electrical fire! Fortunately, the captain of the flaming QE managed to retrive his boat, and I figured out which one was mine. Man, talk about a hair-raising time!

Thursday, 21 July 2005

Thursday was a repeat of Tuesday's schedule, with a fleet battle in the morning and a campaign in the afternoon. The Axis side lost this campaign battle too, thanks in large part to the fact that the Allies had so many ships with tripple sterns to mow down our targets. A couple of Axis ships tried to block the target array, but wound up on the bottom for their trouble. Heroic sacrifice aside, the Thursday morning fleet battle actually went better for the Axis, but the Allied lead in points was pretty well insurmountable by this point.

Friday, 22 July 2005

Firday morning was the final fleet battle. The Goeben (ex-Moltke) continued performing in fine fassion, until she wandered behind the tripple sterns of the cruiser Des Moines in the second sortie. She went down pumping hard, with a nice 1/4" hole punched below her waterline. This was my ship's first sink! Well, now I can say that I've had the full model combat experience. Fortunately, there was no major damage to any of the components, and I was able to send her into action again for the mini-fleet battle that afternoon. After the day's battling, we all piled into our cars and headed out to a local diner to have our end of the week celebration and awards dinner. The Axis had to hand over the victory trophy to the Allies, but nevertheless it was a fun week for all. I was surprised to discover that I won three awards, including Best Sortie Average for Class 4, Rookie of the Year, and the Brian Spychalski Memorial Award. After the banquet, we returned to the camp to have our rules meeting. It was certainly an interesting experience, but I can't say that I had much of anything worthwhile to say. Still, I was glad to be able to sit in an listen to what other members had to say.

A week after it started, NATS came to an end. Vince and I helped with take down as much as we could, but by Saturday morning most of the heavy lifting was already done. We left and wound up getting back to Indiana late that night. Once again, I can't say enough how much of a blast I had that week. I still get excited thinking about it. It may have taken me longer than I ever would have expected, but I did finally make it to NATs and I had a great time.